Sunday, 29 June 2014

The Israeli Air Force carried out, on Sunday at dawn, a series of air strikes targeting different areas in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, causing excessive property damage.

The Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) has reported that an F16 Israeli fighter jet fired a missile into an area, northwest of the Nusseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza, causing excessive property damage, and anxiety attacks among the resident, especially the children.

The area has been repeatedly targeted, over the last few days.

Two more missiles were fired into an area, east of Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, causing damage to several buildings and homes.

The Israeli Air Force also fired two missiles into what is believed to be a resistance camp, in the al-Boreij refugee camp, in central Gaza, causing damage but no injuries.

Another site was also shelled in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, causing excessive property damage.

WAFA said the army also fired a missile at a hothouse in a land located close to the al-Farouq Mosque, also in the Zeitoun neighborhood, causing damage and anxiety attacks among the residents.

In Khan Younis, the Israeli Air Force fired missiles into two areas, causing excessive property damage to a number of homes. more

Dozens of Palestinians held without charge or trial by Israel ended their 63-day-long hunger strike protest yesterday — marking the longest hunger strike in the history of the Palestinian prisoners movement.

Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups stated today that approximately eighty of the hunger strikers are still hospitalized and shackled to their beds.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government is set to push through legislation which would permit the force-feeding of hunger strikers, a threat wielded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an attempt to break the two-month strike.

United Nations experts yesterday called on Israel to abandon the draft law, describing the plan to break the hunger strike as “cruel and inhuman” treatment.

Gavan Kelly of the Palestinian human rights and prisoner advocacy group Addameer told The Electronic Intifada last week that the force feeding tactic amounted to “torture … on an industrial scale.”

Kelly added that “since the second half of 2011, not one day has passed where there hasn’t been at least one Palestinian on hunger strike. And the Israelis have failed to deal with the hunger strikes … we consider that their way to deal with the hunger strikes is through introducing force-feeding.”

In a short video published yesterday, Hassan Jabareen, the founder and general director of the Palestinian human rights group Adalah, explains the goal of the mass hunger strike and Israel’s motivation to break it: more

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, on Sunday claimed responsibility for launching rockets from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel.

The group, which has no connection to the local popular resistance committees that exist throughout the West Bank, said in a statement that its fighters fired four rockets toward Eshkol regional council, three rockets toward Sderot and three toward other Israeli towns.

The shelling is part of "our retaliation to the Israeli crimes against our Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the ongoing violations against prisoners," according to the statement. more